In 1947, in the area of Masada, known as the
Wadi Qumran, on the west side of the Dead Sea, about 12 km south of Jericho,
a young Arab boy called Mohamed Adib, while looking among caves for his lost
goats, discovered some clay jars containing ancient scrolls.A search began and, between the years 1947
and 1956, it was discovered that many more caves along the west side of the Dead Sea also contained copies of ancient
manuscripts.Many of these were still
intact inside their jars.

The manuscripts in this vast collection
became generally known as the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’, and were collected mainly
from three different locations.They
are thought to be the library contents of three ancient communities; and it
seems that, for safekeeping, these communities hid the scrolls in the dry
caves by the Dead Sea, and never reclaimed
them.

Location 1.Wadi Murabba’at (about
14 km south of Masada)

This collection contains mostly
non-biblical manuscripts.They are
primarily the texts relating to the Bar-Kokhba War (a Jewish revolt against
the Romans in AD 132-135), and are mostly letters to and from Simeon
Ben-Kosebah, who called himself ‘Prince of Israel.’However, this library also contains
fragments of a Greek version of the Minor Prophets of the Bible.

Location 2.Khirbet Mird(north of the KidronValley)

This library contains non-biblical
manuscripts belonging to a later date than those found from the Wadi
Murabba’at.They were discovered in
1950 by a Bedouin tribe of Ta’amire.

Location 3.Khirbet Qumran(close to the area of Masada)

Khirbet Qumran
was a building complex, housing the Essenes, an ascetic and monastic
community.These buildings were burned
down in AD 68 by the Romans.The
scrolls that came from this area are the most valuable and interesting, and
are known as the ‘Qumran Texts’.There
are about 100 scrolls in all, and they are made up of biblical and
non-biblical writings, plus some parts of the Apocrypha.They contain all the books of the Old
Testament (except Esther) in Hebrew.They also contain many Old Testament books in the Septuagint translation,
and many Old Testament books from the Aramaic Targums.They also contain some Old Testament books
written in several other languages, which are related to Hebrew and Aramaic.

These scrolls and manuscripts date back to
between 150 BC and AD 68.Some are
about a thousand years older than the earliest known surviving copies of the
Scriptures, and careful comparison between the two has revealed an almost
‘word for word’ accuracy.

Also From Location 3–Copper Scroll from Cave 3

An interesting scroll, although this
may have nothing to do with the Qumran
community.The scroll contains a coded
inventory of the Temple
treasures.These treasures were
apparently divided into sixty-one caches, and hidden in various areas to the
south and east of Jerusalem.

The relatively ‘intact’ manuscripts
of greatest interest and significance were found in Caves 1 and 11, and are
now housed, preserved and displayed in a museum, near Gavit Ram in Jerusalem,
known as the ‘Shrine of the Book’.

Shrine of
the Book

The fascinating museum has been
built two-thirds below ground level, and has a white-dome roof symbolising
the lids of the clay jars that once contained the scrolls.The white of the dome roof starkly
contrasts with a near-by black basalt wall, and the shape and colour of the
two structures symbolise the spiritual struggle between the Sons of Light (a
name the Essenes gave themselves) and the Sons of Darkness (their enemies,
and the enemies of Judaism generally).These struggles are expressed in the writing of many of the scrolls.